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Nissan Electric Car Sales Booming In Oregon, Washington

Since the Northwest's first Nissan Leaf was sold in late 2010, sales of the fully electric care have surged, then waned, and are now surging again.

Tom Banse / Northwest News Network

The automaker Nissan says sales of its fully electric Leaf compact surpassed all other Nissan models at dealers in the Seattle and Portland areas this spring. The announcement Wednesday runs counter to the prevailing wisdom that adoption of plug-in cars has been sluggish.

Gottfried says that was made possible by opening a domestic production line in Tennessee. “By moving production to the United States we have a little more control of our production costs and we’re not subject to shipping costs from Japan on boats and we also don’t have foreign exchange rate fluctuations.”

A Nissan dealership in Bellevue, Washington claims it’s the No. 1 seller of electric Leafs in the nation.

The electric vehicle coordinator at Oregon’s Department of Transportation says increased product availability is spurring EV sales across many brands. ODOT’s Ashley Horvat says having a “very robust” charging network has also helped. Oregon claims to have the most EV charging stations per capita of any state.